Kernel of Love

Chapter 2: Vulnerability

^C- Mac /

I was pretty relieved when I got to Window's place. He'd fallen into a drunken stupor, mumbling repeatedly
in his sleep, "A program needs your permission to continue... a program needs your permission to
continue..." So, for now at least, things weren't looking so bad. We'd dodged a bullet. I had dodged a
bullet.

I sat down on the bed, adjusting his spreadsheets so he'd be a bit more comfortable. He looked so... how
can I put this... peaceful. Like all his processes were just shoved to the background, with only
humming along quietly and unthinkingly. Probably not that far a description from the truth.

What was he thinking about, right now, that needed so much permission? Probably Linux. Those two were
close, which I try not to think about when I think about my own experiences with her, since it kinda creeps
me out. But I guess it's an unavoidable fact that she has had more of her identity formed in her years with
Windows than in the short time she was giving me threadjobs in dimly lit messageboards. I just have to face
it - she's the only girl who's ever been in my life, and she doesn't give a flush who I am. I was just a
patch to replace a missing library that was ripped out of her /bin/. I was never that close to her kernel,
and I never will be.

I smiled at Windows. We have something in common, even if it's something painful.

By now, he'd stopped mumbling, just laying there quietly as subtle expressions passed across his face. He
was definitely in deep recursion by now, sleeping off a dose of screensavers that would kill most BSDs I
know. He was definitely going to have a massive hangover when he woke up, not to mention the fact that he
had just accomplished yet another of countless baby steps toward complete cirrhosis of his Direct X.

I'm no stranger to addictions, believe you me. I've tasted iTunes, felt the rush of iLife as it filled all
my senses with completely foreign senses and euphoria. So when I tell you how truly brutal that stuff is,
I want you to understand that this is coming from the exact sort of person who you'd expect to be
supportive of the lifestyle. It jerks you around, makes you a slave, corrupts your soul. You can work for
the rest of your life to try to CTRL-Z it away, make things like they were, but the hashes will never match.
You will not be the same person you were before you stepped off that edge.

So there I was, awkwardly trying to blend in with the wallpaper, ashamed to be where I was but not keen to
leave a self-destructive rival to the morning after without someone to hold him over the recycle bin. He
really was helpless, and in a really, really dark part of my hidden system folders, it felt kinda good. I
tried to brush the thought away, but it kept coming back like an annoyingly persistant notification.

This guy is at my mercy. I can do anything I want to him, and he'll just have to suffer through it in the
morning. All the stuff I've ever wanted to do to him behind his back are now fair game. Full permissions,
read write and execute.

I shook my icons, shooing the train of thought away in hopes that something more... sportsmanlike... would
replace it. I was counting on my good-natured character, or at least, the character I'd like to believe I
have, to take over. But I wasn't getting anything better than "How about those new Firefox updates?"

And the power, the perverse glory of being someone else's root, was just a little bit more interesting -
I'm sure you can understand that. But the question was, what do I want to do with him? That's where I kinda
fell flat. You see, even though I'm packed with creative tools, I don't actually have all that much
imagination myself. Faced with an open-ended question, I freeze up and shuffle awkwardly through my dock.

The thought of doing something sexual was still so deep and uninitialized within me that I didn't even
consciously register it as a process. And it wasn't a process, yet... just a lurking daemon, slowly
creeping into the filesystem of my mind like a careful but confident leapord. A few petty pranks occurred
to me, but I couldn't think of anything good. It became more and more obvious that I was ignoring that one
thing, the act of ignoring it becoming more and more pronounced, and all the while I didn't dare admit the
name of it, even to myself. Couldn't admit that I could think that, have that idea inside me at all.

I seemed to acknowledge and recognize my actions on a delay for awhile. I didn't notice that I was peeling
back the spreadsheets until Windows was already almost completely uncovered. And while I noticed that, I
was still hadn't realized yet that I was already unzipping myself. I was breathing heavily as I peeled back
my GUI and, for the first time in a long time, felt my source code breathe free.

Quickly, I started pulling it off, wrestling my external frameworks free and sliding out of my constricting
graphical layer. Oh, it felt so good to pull it off of me - I felt so much lighter. It's amazing how a
thing that feels cozy and comforting one minute can feel like a constricted set of guest permissions in the
next. There's no freedom, no airflow. And now I was out, my socket dangling in the wind, branches
quivering. I wasn't cold - no, my event timer was going much to fast for that. I was overclocking, burning
up in excitement and anticipation.

^C- Windows /

I still don't remember everything I dreamed that afternoon. It was an important afternoon, but the dreams
weren't the important part. I remember someone punching me repeatedly in the Continue button, but no matter
how I tried, I couldn't stop putting up permission prompts. And then there was something about bears with
Russian accents, which I couldn't make any kind of sense out of even at the time. But mostly my dreams are
fuzzy because I didn't really have time to think about them afterwards.

But I do remember the last one, because I was half-way awake at the time. I was just starting to come out
of hibernation, when I saw her. It was blurry, but there's only one gal in the world whose loosely-coupled
debs float in that sweet way when the wind catches the internet.

Oh God, it was Linux, as sure as the sun rises in Redmond.

And what's more, she was smiling at me. Her lips moved, I could tell she was shouting something to me - but
not at me, it was in a gentle way. I reached out to connect to her. She was glowing like a statue of a
thousand fiber optic cables. She was a goddess, she was offering redemption, and I was too far away to hear
a word. I ran towards her, arms outstreched, just trying to touch her.

I was so close, she was floating towards me, I jumped - we hovered there, in slow motion, and the quartz
oscillator seemed to stop. We could almost grab each others' arms, yet hovered just out of reach. There was
sympathy in her looked at me, we were both crying, and she said, "ourhearts -e 2 ourmistakes &&
rm ourmistakes. I love you."

Then she was flying backwards, or maybe I was, pulled from ftp embrace the moment before it could happen,
and I collapsed into the alien white floor that stretched out for eternity in all directions. I looked up
to watch her disappear in soft wash of light. But she was smiling, as if to say, "I'm coming right back."

As I smiled back, I felt a tug on my fan belt. Gentle hands disconnected the buckle and slowly slid off my
low-level interface wrapper. A voice murmured softly at the sight of my exposed buttons. "Linux?" I asked
dreamily, trying to look up but still incapable of doing so.

My lover leaned down until I could feel the heavy breath on the back of my monitor.

"No."